Trout Lily, E&A Nature Trail, Elkin
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[ 2 poems by Arthur Sze ]
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Entanglement
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5
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Along the shore, bald eagles nest in the yellow cedars—
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my clothes reek of cedar smoke—
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I wrap clothes around glass jars of king salmon in my knapsack—
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standing on a dock, I board a floatplane—
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floaters in my eyes, wherever I go—
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wherever you go, you cannot travel faster than light—
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synapses firing in my body are a form of light—
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threads of fugitive dye entangled in neural firings—
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scent of summer in the blackening leaves—
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a black bear swipes a screen door and ransacks a kitchen—
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we ransack the past and discover action at a distance—
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entangled waves of near and far—
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a photon fired through a slit behaves like a wave—
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we inhale, and our lungs oxygenate a cosmos—
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a fire breaks out of the secret depths of the earth—
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revel in the beauty of form.
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Arthur Sze
from White Orchard, new poems in The Glass Constellation, New and Collected Poems; Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend WA; © 2024
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Transpirations
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Leaving branches of a backyard plum—
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branches of water on a dissolving ice sheet—
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chatter of magpies when you approach—
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lilacs lean over the road, weighted with purple blossoms—
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then the noon sun shimmers the grasses—
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you ride the surge into summer—
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smell of piñon crackling in the fireplace—
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blued notes of a saxophone in the air—
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not by sand running through an hourglass but by our bodies igniting—
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passing in the form of vapors from a living body—
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this world of orange sunlight and wildfire haze—
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world of iron filings pulled toward magnetic south and north—
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pool of quicksilver when you bend to tie your shoes—
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standing, you well up with glistening eyes—
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have you lived with utmost care?—
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have you articulated emotions like the edges of leaves?—
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adjust your breath to the seasonal rhythm of grasses—
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gazing into a lake on a salt flat and drinking, in reflection, the Milky Way—
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Arthur Sze
from White Orchard, new poems in The Glass Constellation, New and Collected Poems; Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend WA; © 2024
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Adam & Eve Orchid, E&A Nature Trail, Elkin
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. . . . . Last night, gazing
at Orion’s belt and sword sparkling in the sky,
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I saw how we yearn for connection where
no connection exists: what belt, what sword?
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from Ravine, Arthur Sze
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And yet when I try to separate things, pull them apart to understand, they feel like they are all connected. Like the lines in these poems. At first each is its own crystallized moment, its individual monoku of presence. I slow myself to read the lines again, calmer, unhurried, in sequence, and they begin to speak to each other. They entangle and combine. They spark little flashes at the back door of consciousness. Meaning wants to come in from the dark. I can’t necessarily tell you Meaning’s dimensions nor her Latin binomial, but I can say that she seems companionable. She looks and smells and speaks like someone I’d like to have come in and set a spell.
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Meaning, are you out there waiting patiently to be found, or are you nothing but a fancy my mind creates? I know your cousin Reality is not really comprised of infinitesimal billiard balls in orbit but rather clouds of potentiality. Nevertheless, Reality and mind do interact. Quantum superposition – the wave function collapses to a defined presence when touched by consciousness. This line of poetry is infused with meanings. I bring all my history and my own potentialities to its moment of reading. Who could foresee how all those elements might react? But they do. And Meaning and I leave the event arm in arm.
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Arthur Sze is the twenty-fifth Poet Laureate of the United States, appointed in 2025. He was born in New York City in 1950 and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife poet Carol Moldaw. The Glass Constellation collects poems from ten earlier collections spanning fifty years, as well as twenty-six new poems (sampled here). It is the winner of the 2024 National Book Foundation Science and Literature Award.
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The Glass Constellation is available from Copper Canyon Press, and you can sample two poems from Arthur Sze’s newest book, Into the Hush, at an earlier poste HERE
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Cranefly Orchid, E&A Nature Trail, Elkin
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Very true. And not that she ignores the grief and woe of living but somehow makes all of life a…